


Champagne in the Final Days of Rome

by DesdemonaKaylose



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Breakfast at Tiffany's - Freeform, M/M, Pre-War, Transformers Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing, cybertronian high society
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:54:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23601160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose
Summary: Starscream blazed through life in a haze of chandeliers and last night’s smudging temporary paint, an absolute mess, with the ball bearings to expect the world to thank him for simply existing. And Megatron, terror of the Kaon arena, was smitten from the first punch.
Relationships: Megatron/Starscream (Transformers)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 117





	Champagne in the Final Days of Rome

**Author's Note:**

> this set up is heavily inspired by Astolat's G1 fics, as you might guess from looking at it. I definitely played this song too many times on loop while writing this.

The first time Megatron met Starscream, the seeker was wearing a delicate pastel blue that was at once both the color of wasted shanix and obscene luxury. Megatron had met seekers before, one or two, and they didn’t look like Starscream--where other seekers were modestly handsome in an impersonal sort of way, Starscream was broad-shouldered and narrow waisted, so cutting-edged that he probably tore the fabric of fashion every time he walked into a room.

There was an appeal there, perhaps; Megatron just wasn’t entirely sure what it was. Avante garde styling and wasted money meant nothing to him. The whole place was frivolous. His presence here was frivolous.

Megatron stood there, lip curling, a dark black blot in the midst of gay and uproarious finery. He would not be mingling. If this was where his host had seen fit to deposit him, then here he would stay.

“You look _awfully_ smug for someone with nothing to be smug about,” Starscream said, leaning lazily over the back of a chaise lounge carpeted in some obscure green fabric.

“Ohhhh, _Starscream,”_ the seeker next to him said, this one a more traditional shape for his frame type. “Do him, do him.”

Starscream flicked his red glass gaze up and down Megatron, and then smirked. “Why even _bother_ ,” he said, “I don’t even get out of my berth for the shanix his whole frame is worth.”

Megatron could feel eyes on them, the displaced air of people leaning in to eavesdrop. The other seeker was barely containing his enthusiasm, up on his knees and practically bouncing. 

“An awful, ugly, boring lug,” Starscream continued, with visible delight. “You look like a day laborer that someone dragged in off the street for a laugh. You look like a trash scow wandered into a china shop. You look like something a trash scow would have trouble hauling _off_. You look like the bottom layer of a scrapyard someone gave a halfhearted spit and polish to; you look like the monster conjunx that some homeless dumpster diver in the Dead End soldered together out of dead miners.”

There wasn’t laughter exactly—these bots were all too finely bred to titter at that kind of language. But the way they relished his deconstruction was thick in the air, like heat exhaust.

Starscream leant forward, engex sloshing from his deep-bottomed glassware. “How about _that_ ,” he said, with an expression that was too full of teeth to be a smile.

Megatron looked at him. “What an interesting party trick,” he said, holding all his boiling spark behind his evenly pitched voice. “Did you learn to say that kind of thing in the factory, seeker?”

There was silence, like the moment before the pod bay door blasts out into the roaring vacuum of space, taking all your atmosphere with it. And then Starscream launched himself over the back of the chaise lounge, wicked clawtips gouging the imported material, heel thrusters blackening the upholstery. 

Megatron was the champion of Kaon, undefeated six time champion even—he’d taken triple changers and Maximi and everything in between—but when several tons of furious seeker are flying at you going half the speed of the sound barrier in a parlor with crystal chandeliers and at least twenty other people who would be more than happy to watch either of you die, right now, for free—

There’s not much to do except brace for impact.

Starscream and Megatron hit the ground a story down in a rain of glass and fine white dust, the tinging clinking hail of broken masonry. Starscream’s frame was built for flight, lightweight, but he punched like he wanted it to hurt you at any cost, breaking his knuckles against denser, harder metal. There were a series of crunches as he threw himself against anything that looked even remotely vulnerable. It was a snarling, feral thing, and for a good long moment Megatron forgot to even fight back, blinded as he was by the incongruity of delicate blue gloss and smashed in, whirling knuckles.

The light of the mansion haloed Starscream’s helm in snowy gold and white; his fangs flashed in the night.

Some time later, after Megatron had busted open Starscream’s chassis and pinned him to the garden floor, he took a seat on Starscream’s back and let out a sigh, settling some of his weight on the palms of his hands. There was a shattered alien bloom strewn across the garden path at his feet. The last of the curious faces were disappearing from the windows, finally allowing themselves to be tempted away from the spectacle by the host’s display of fine treats.

“I look like a laborer because I _am_ one,” Megatron said, enjoying the coolness of the night outside of the stuffy party, and the fresh warmth of a little exertion. “I’m also the reigning champion of the Kaon arena, which you would know if you introduced yourself before unleashing your forked tongue.”

“Get _off_ me,” Starscream hissed, kicking his thrusters futilely in the air. “You tin plated buffoon! Let me up this instant!”

Megatron made a noncommittal noise, enjoying Starscream’s blistering humiliation just a little too much.

“And I thought tonight was going to be boring,” he said. “What’s _your_ story, seeker?”

“I have a _name,”_ Starscream snarled. “You’re not rich enough to talk to me like that, you hulking ignoramus.”

“And if I was rich,” Megatron said, narrowing his eyes, “what then? Would you let me call you by your frame, seeker? Would you let me call you _pretty thing_ and _pet_ and any sort of degrading drivel I like?”

“Like you could even afford to buy me _lunch,”_ Starscream snarled. 

Megatron considered this for a moment. “Give me your comm frequency,” he said, after a moment of quiet work.

“Why?” Starscream snapped. “So you can stalk me like some kind of mangy turbofox? Please, I have a rotating encryption, I’ll be gone like a bad credit tomorrow. You can _have it,_ for all the good it’ll do you.”

There was a ping, a mental handshake, and then Starscream’s frequency opened to him like something coy and half-inviting. Megatron shot over the confirmation of a dinner reservation for two, at—

 _“Emerald?”_ Starscream said. “How the pit did _you_ afford _that?”_

Megatron heaved himself upright, brushing particulate from his shoulders. “If you had been listening just now instead of kicking your pedes, you would have heard me say I’m the reigning champion of the Kaon arena. It is _not_ a job that one takes out of a sense of charity and philanthropy towards the bloodthirsty masses. I make quite a lot of money each season simply for fighting, and the prize money is nothing to cough at either.”

Starscream was still blank-eyed, frowning at something only he could see. Possibly the reservation details.

“I have considerable assets,” Megatron said. He felt, for some reason, that he needed to emphasize this. “I’m not one for frivolous spending.”

“And _yet,”_ Starscream said, optics flickering back to life, “you’ve reserved two seats at the most _in_ restaurants within three provinces. And you haven't even asked me to dine yet.”

Megatron held out his hand, tanks curling with anticipation, and offered it to Starscream.

“Well,” Megatron said. “In that case, perhaps you would like to take fuel with me tomorrow?”

On the ground, scratched and dented with his chassis popped open from a hard blow, Starscream regarded his hand with a predatory glint of the optics. There was a dent in his shoulder, a scrape through the polish of his helm, his expression both shrewd and greedy. He reached up, and he closed his elegant hand around Megatron’s blunt one.

“Wouldn’t you know,” he said, “I do believe my schedule just opened up.”

Starscream blazed through life, it seemed, in a haze of chandeliers and last night’s smudging temporary paint, an absolute mess, with the ball bearings to expect the world to thank him for simply existing.

What Megatron would eventually find out, from both his agent and from the host of the evening’s party, was that Starscream and his trine did not have _jobs,_ per se. They lived off gifts from wealthy date mates and particular friends in a penthouse apartment overlooking the second most fashionable part of Iacon, fueling at a different party every night, recharging in daisy chains with their paramours of the evening. You had to invite them, if you were anyone who was anyone, despite the fact that some item of furniture was likely to end up broken by the end of your party. They were professional gossip items, professional guests, career unemployeds. 

There was apparently a specific packet of home insurance available in Vos known by nearly everyone in the city as “Starscream Insurance”. Megatron did not have a difficult time drawing his own conclusions about why the trine currently lived in Iacon, instead of their native city.

“Skywarp is up for anything,” Starscream told him, as they lay in the tattered remains of a berth whose alien silks were worth more than most Cybertronians spent on fuel in a year. “He’s the most popular of us. Thundercracker mostly just moons about some one thing or another, he’s what you call a sensitive type, but there are people who like that, I suppose. It makes them feel _deep_ and _serious._ ”

“And you?” Megatron asked. 

Starscream scoffed, examining the glossy tips of his tiffany blue talons. “I think my looks speak for themselves,” he said. “Otherwise why the hell would we be having this conversation?”

The room was one of their host’s many spare guest rooms, opulent and discrete, easily located by Starscream as he pulled Megatron up through the empty halls and down away from the ongoing party. Starscream had clawed the bedding and thrashed his wings until it was in shreds, thrusters kicking and dragging Megatron close, demanding and shameless, while Megatron sucked his jack until it was throwing up sparks.

“There are any number of pretty frames in Iacon,” Megatron said, resting his chin against his knuckles. “You’re something else.”

“Novelty, then,” Starscream said, in a bored tone. The seeker’s jack and socket were still brazenly on display, still wet from Megatron’s mouth, but it seemed more a challenge than an invitation.

Megatron understood novelty. He, also, was a novelty. All these society mechs swanning about, enticed by the exoticism of his heavy frame, by the barbarism of the sport they paid to see. This year’s special flavor, isn’t he droll, doesn’t he speak so well? Speak a bit for us, construct. Go on.

Starscream, no matter how his layers of upgrades tried to disguise it, was equally, obviously, not of this world any more than the gladiator from Tarn.

“I tell them how dull and petty and classless they are, and they love me for it,” Starscream said. “It’s a perfect scam.”

Megatron curled his lip. “Don’t you grow tired of playing the fool for all of them?”

“ _Fool?”_ Starscream said, wings flaring as he pushed himself up in the berth. “And what do you do all day, staggering around in the sand, punching and grunting and knocking other mechs’ teeth out? One day you’ll be all used up and I’ll still be here, drinking good engex on some other idiot’s dime.”

“At least I’m free,” Megatron said. “You’re at the mercy of whoever owns you this month.”

“Nobody _owns me,”_ Starscream said, optics narrowing dangerously. “Let them try! You can borrow me for a while, but no one will _ever_ own me.”

Megatron folded his hands behind his helm. “Alright,” he said.

Starscream hesitated. “Alright what?”

“Be mine for a while,” Megatron said. “I’ve got money, you’ve got expenses.”

“And what do _you_ get out of it?” Starscream demanded.

Megatron cast him a sideways look. It wasn’t the socket and it wasn’t the jack; it wasn’t the talons or the tiffany blue, or the shapely wings. None of those things were particularly interesting, save that they were Starscream’s. His attention lingered on the scrape in the polish, on the dents and the rough spots from the garden. There was something feral and brilliant in Starscream, something cruel and calculating.

“The pleasure of your company,” he said, “of course.”

Starscream could be more than this, he had little doubt. All it would take would be the right encouragement.

Starscream settled a bit, mollified. “Of course,” he agreed. “Naturally. As long as we understand each other.”

Some time after this, Soundwave, upon being asked for a quick background check of Megatron’s scheduled lunch partner, would produce a pamphlet by an anonymous Iaconian writer titled “A Guide to Popular Life in Vos”, which contained a ruthless caricature of Starscream himself, bigger than life and twice as shameless.

Megatron would return to the pamphlet over and over again, reading in its caricature the shape of a ferocious anger behind the delicate blue enamel, of some greater, darker rage. He had felt it there, in the garden, and he had known it like a homecoming.

There was a monster in Starscream, and Megatron—terror that he was—hungered to own it.


End file.
